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Jeffrey Goldberg on the Mideast Divide

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New Yorker magazine writer Jeffrey Goldberg grew up taunted by history and anti-Semitism, an American Jew eager to lift a rifle for Israel. He joined the Israeli Army in the first Intifadah, and was assigned to help guard a prison holding Palestinian leaders of that uprising.

The cruelties he saw there offended his American sense of right and wrong, and quickly challenged his naive idealism. But his effort to reach out and befriend one Palestinian prisoner took him even deeper into the psychological thicket of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now Jeffrey Goldberg is telling his story.

We go deep in the Mideast divide with author Jeffrey Goldberg.

Quotes from the Show:

"I sort of discovered my Americanness through this experience." Jeffrey Goldberg

"I couldn't punish someone for something someone else had done. ... I thought that was un-American." Jeffrey Goldberg

"As much as it is Western, Israel is also a very Middle-Eastern place, and that was quite alienating for me." Jeffrey Goldberg

Guests:

Jeffrey Goldberg, Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, author of "Prisoners: A Muslim and A Jew Across the Middle East Divide"

Shmuel Rosner, senior U.S. correspondent for Haaretz newspaper.

This program aired on November 2, 2006. The audio for this program is not available.

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